Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s … a drone, and it’s watching you. That’s what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congress passed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace.

The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015.

Privacy advocates say the measure will lead to widespread use of drones for electronic surveillance by police agencies across the country and eventually by private companies as well.

“There are serious policy questions on the horizon about privacy and surveillance, by both government agencies and commercial entities,” said Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also is “concerned about the implications for surveillance by government agencies,” said attorney Jennifer Lynch. The provision in the legislation is the fruit of “a huge push by lawmakers and the defense sector to expand the use of drones” in American airspace, she added.

According to some estimates, the commercial drone market in the United States could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars once the FAA clears their use.

The agency projects that 30,000 drones could be in the nation’s skies by 2020.

The highest-profile use of drones by the United States has been in the CIA’s armed Predator-drone program, which targets al Qaeda terrorist leaders. But the vast majority of U.S. drone missions, even in war zones, are flown for surveillance. Some drones are as small as model aircraft, while others have the wingspan of a full-size jet.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. use of drone surveillance has grown so rapidly that it has created a glut of video material to be analyzed.

The legislation would order the FAA, before the end of the year, to expedite the process through which it authorizes the use of drones by federal, state and local police and other agencies. The FAA currently issues certificates, which can cover multiple flights by more than one aircraft in a particular area, on a case-by-case basis.

The Department of Homeland Security is the only federal agency to discuss openly its use of drones in domestic airspace.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the department, operates nine drones, variants of the CIA’s feared Predator. The aircraft, which are flown remotely by a team of 80 fully qualified pilots, are used principally for border and counternarcotics surveillance under four long-term FAA certificates.

Officials say they can be used on a short-term basis for a variety of other public-safety and emergency-management missions if a separate certificate is issued for that mission.

“It’s not all about surveillance,” Mr. Aftergood said. source – Washington Times

The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015.

Oh... well, shit. That's not even remotely close to what the title was suggesting. But hey, you weren't really expecting a title that reflects the reality, were you?

The agency projects that 30,000 drones could be in the nation’s skies by 2020.

The area of the United States is 3,794,000 miles2. So by 2020, if this prediction is accurate, and you assume an even distribution of drones across the entire United States, there will be one drone per 126 miles2. While that may sound scary, perhaps you ought to consider that satellites currently provide 100% coverage of the continental United States, and by combining imagery from multiple commercial satellites and using advanced image processing techniques can achieve effective resolutions of about 5 inches... "spy drones" don't worry me too much.

In his 1980 graduate thesis at the University of Texas at Austin, John Brennan denied the existence of “absolute human rights” and argued in favor of censorship on the part of the Egyptian dictatorship.

“Since the press can play such an influential role in determining the perceptions of the masses, I am in favor of some degree of government censorship,” Brennan wrote. “Inflamatory [sic] articles can provoke mass opposition and possible violence, especially in developing political systems.”

Brennan serves as President Barack Obama’s national security advisor. Obama has nominated him to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

Barry Siegel's book "Manifest Injustice" chronicles the saga of Bill Macumber, who was falsely was imprisoned for 37 years for the murder of two people in Scottsdale, Ariz.

What's most galling about this tragedy is that it could have been avoided if not for a legal technicality.

A man named Ernest Valenzuela had confessed the crime to his attorney—before later dying in a prison fight. The attorney's testimony could have vindicated Macumber. Instead, a judge protected the attorney-client privilege of the dead man and let the innocent man go to jail.

When Macumber came to trial in 1975, Valenzuela's former public defender Thomas O'Toole wrote to the trial judge asking to testify about his now-dead client's confession.

However, Judge Charles Hardy wouldn't allow the confession to be heard.

"Let the record show the Court has ruled that the proffered evidence isn't admissible," Hardy said in his ruling, according to the book. "First because the communications to Mr. O'Toole and Mr. Petica [another of Valenzuela's defense attorneys] were privileged because of the attorney-client relationship. There's no waiver of the privilege."

After Macumber was sentenced to life behind bars, his defense team appealed the case all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court.

The state Supreme Court ultimately gave him a retrial because of issues with ballistics evidence.

But in its ruling granting him a retrial, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled the trial court could still "assert" the attorney-client privilege on behalf of the dead man and exclude his testimony if it wanted to.

But yet again, the court ruled against Macumber, with Judge Robert Corcoran saying attorney-client privilege prevented the testimony. Macumber was convicted a second time.

After reading the book, we were shocked that a dead man's rights would supersede those of a living man who was fighting for his life.But according to legal ethics expert Andrew Perlman, who teaches procedure and professional responsibility at Suffolk University Law School, the court made the right decision with respect to the law.

"It is not shocking to me that a court would uphold the privilege here, even though doing so might have produced an unjust outcome in this particular case," Perlman said in an email to Business Insider. "The problem is that if courts reject the privilege any time it might be perceived as necessary to uncover the truth, clients would become quite concerned about sharing any information with their lawyers. Although I believe that there should be an exception to the duty of confidentiality to permit lawyers to disclose information necessary to prevent the wrongful execution or incarceration of an innocent person, I am not convinced that such a disclosure should have the effect of waiving the attorney-client privilege."

Macumber was released from prison in November 2012 after the Arizona Justice Project got involved and filed motions that successfully questioned the judges' decisions to not allow Valenzuela's testimony, The Republic reported at the time.

A Tewksbury motel owner who just beat back U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s three-year bid to seize his business has become the latest critic to accuse the Hub’s top fed of prosecutorial bullying.

Related: Ex-Probation commissioner John O’Brien blasts feds for dusting off statutes used on mafia

“I don’t think she should have the power she has to pull this stuff on people,” Russ Caswell, owner of the Motel Caswell, told the Herald last night after a judge’s ruling in his favor.

The feds first tried to grab Caswell’s property in 2009 under drug seizure laws, citing numerous drug busts at the motel. Caswell’s defense team argued that he was not responsible for what guests did. And his lawyers found there was actually more drug activity at nearby businesses, and theorized the government was going after Caswell, who has no criminal record, because his mortgage-free property is worth more than $1 million.

“It’s bullying by the government. And it’s a huge waste of taxpayer money,” said Caswell, whose father built the motel in 1955. “This has been a huge financial and physical toll. It’s thrown our whole family into turmoil. You work for all your life to pay for something and these people come along and think it’s theirs. It’s just wrong. The average person can’t afford to fight this.”

In a written decision after a November trial, U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith Gail Dein dismissed the government’s forfeiture action, ruling yesterday that Caswell, “who was trying to eke out an income from a business located in a drug-infested area that posed great risks to the safety of him and his family,” took all reasonable steps to prevent crime.

“The Government’s resolution of the crime problem should not be to simply take his Property,” Dein said in her decision.

The innkeeper’s complaint follows the suicide of hacker Aaron Swartz, who faced up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines. Swartz’s family, lawyers and legal commentators have called for Ortiz’s ouster and new guidelines for federal attorneys, saying the Swartz case was a prosecutorial abuse.

Ortiz has defended her prosecution of Swartz’s effort to post paywall-protected academic papers freely on the Internet. Her spokeswoman declined comment on the Caswell case last night, saying prosecutors are reviewing the judge’s decision.

Caswell estimates the U.S. government will have to pay at least $600,000 toward his defense fees.

“It’s a case that should not have been filed in the first place,” said Scott Bullock of the Virginia-based Institute for Justice, who worked on Caswell’s case. “This is one of the most aggressive uses of civil forfeiture laws. It’s a power that’s too easily abused, and this case epitomizes what an aggressive U.S. attorney can do to a small-business owner with that law.”

Boston College Law Professor George Brown said the Caswell and Swartz cases may lend momentum to the effort to rein in aggressive prosecutions.

“That scrutiny is a good thing. After all, it is a public office,” Brown said. “What’s going on here is a lot of things are happening at the same time that I think are making the public and the bar feel that maybe accountability and transparency is called for at the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

So the question is whether he's so fucking dumb that he can't see through himself, or whether he is a crypto-fascist who would ignore the inconsistency of his own statement in order to help achieve a goal.

Does anyone need further proof of the true design of modern media? He should have never been allowed to make that statement without further explanation. Absolutely outrageous, and an insult to all good people.

The area of the United States is 3,794,000 miles2. So by 2020, if this prediction is accurate, and you assume an even distribution of drones across the entire United States, there will be one drone per 126 miles2. While that may sound scary, perhaps you ought to consider that satellites currently provide 100% coverage of the continental United States, and by combining imagery from multiple commercial satellites and using advanced image processing techniques can achieve effective resolutions of about 5 inches... "spy drones" don't worry me too much.

San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne is fully supportive of the Obama/Feinstein gun grab, and says if lawmakers play it right Americans can be completely disarmed within "a generation."

Lansdowne has gone on record saying: "I could not be more supportive of the president for taking the position he has. I think it's courageous with the politics involved in this process. [And] I think it's going to eventually make the country safer."

He made it clear that it may take "a generation," but new laws could eventually take all guns off the streets.

This is quite a departure from other law enforcement personnel we've seen around the country--particularly Sheriffs--who've come out firmly against any infringement on the 2nd Amendment. We've cheered those officials for standing with the people, and now Lansdowne has taken a position completely opposite them.

The type of information that particular drones seek is largely irrelevant in the sense that most sensors of interest for wide-scale, real-time surveillance (except infrared) can already be deployed from orbital and high-altitude platforms and don't really benefit from being deployed on drone platforms. That's not to say that drones don't have their uses - they do. But it's silly to assert that drones somehow revolutionize data collection capabilities. At best, they supplement existing platforms under specific scenarios.

Consider the ARGUS system for example, which can allegedly record high-resolution video of a roughly circular area up to six miles wide from 20,000 feet. The article notes that the system can track "every car and person in real time" but I think the author is confused (or an idiot). At best such a system can resolve each car and person in its field of vision, but resolving and tracking are two different things.

Even if all 30,000 of the drones authorized to fly over the United States were ARGUS drones, and were equally distributed througout the continental United States you'd only achieve about 5% coverage. Which is silly, since you already have 100% coverage from commercial satellite imagery providers at about the same resolution if you post-process collected data.

And I'll also point out the one thing that most people don't understand that makes drones impractical for wide-scale, real-time surveillance: the sheer amount of bandwidth necessary to transmit drone information exceeds what we can achieve with wired data connections. It can even exceed what can be sensibly stored. The ARGUS, shown above, generates about 6.6 petabytes of information per day. Assuming you buy only 4TB hard drives and don't worry about redundancy, just storage, you'd need almost 1700 hard drives to store the data from a single ARGUS drone. That is, if you could get it off the drone in real-time: you'd need to be able to transmit 80 gigabytes per second data streams...

The type of information that particular drones seek is largely irrelevant in the sense that most sensors of interest for wide-scale, real-time surveillance (except infrared) can already be deployed from orbital and high-altitude platforms and don't really benefit from being deployed on drone platforms. That's not to say that drones don't have their uses - they do. But it's silly to assert that drones somehow revolutionize data collection capabilities. At best, they supplement existing platforms under specific scenarios.

Consider the ARGUS system for example, which can allegedly record high-resolution video of a roughly circular area up to six miles wide from 20,000 feet. The article notes that the system can track "every car and person in real time" but I think the author is confused (or an idiot). At best such a system can resolve each car and person in its field of vision, but resolving and tracking are two different things.

Even if all 30,000 of the drones authorized to fly over the United States were ARGUS drones, and were equally distributed througout the continental United States you'd only achieve about 5% coverage. Which is silly, since you already have 100% coverage from commercial satellite imagery providers at about the same resolution if you post-process collected data.

And I'll also point out the one thing that most people don't understand that makes drones impractical for wide-scale, real-time surveillance: the sheer amount of bandwidth necessary to transmit drone information exceeds what we can achieve with wired data connections. It can even exceed what can be sensibly stored. The ARGUS, shown above, generates about 6.6 petabytes of information per day. Assuming you buy only 4TB hard drives and don't worry about redundancy, just storage, you'd need almost 1700 hard drives to store the data from a single ARGUS drone. That is, if you could get it off the drone in real-time: you'd need to be able to transmit 80 gigabytes per second data streams...

Right. That's a situation where drones do make sense and it's how drones have been used for a while now.

But I just don't think that authorizing drones to fly over the continental United States and coming up with regulations for such flights is a bad thing or, as 333386 fears, part of Obama's secret plan to resurrect Stalin and make sweet sweet love to him.

It doesn't have much to do with imposing a massive surveillance society either; frankly if one is really concerned about that there are a lot more intrusive methods currently employed.

Although, I guess once drones become more affordable to own and operate those "Speed Enforced by Aircraft" signs on long stretches of deserted highways might actually give me pause. Not that I expect them to care much better than silly speed cameras.

Two Houston police officers are facing life in prison without the possibility of parole after allegations they accepted $2,000 in bribes to protect a stash of cocaine being smuggled through the city.

Emerson Canizales, 26, of Kingwood, and Michael Miceli, 26, of Humble, who are accused of taking $1,000 each, were quietly arrested with the help of a Houston Police SWAT team over the weekend as they reported for duty.

The Houston Police Department officers, who graduated from the same police academy class in 2010, stood side by side before a federal magistrate Monday during a brief hearing in which they were read their rights and advised of the charges rooted in a drug distribution conspiracy.

In contrast to other prisoners who wore familiar orange jumpsuits, Canizales and Miceli appeared in court in matching dark blue pants and black T-shirts and kept their arms behind their backs.

Sources, who did not wish to be identified because they were not authorized to talk, said the officers used an HPD patrol car to escort the load as it was moved from one side of the city to the other. The thinking was that if the drug trafficker was pulled over by other police, they could intervene.

Authorities declined to say exactly what led to the officers' arrests or how they were caught. But a prepared statement from Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland indicated they were snared in a sting operation.

"We have been working cooperatively with federal authorities on this investigation," McClelland said. "And are proud that our internal proactive measures have proven effective in addressing these types of allegations."

Released on bond

U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Milloy ordered the officers released on a $50,000 bond and told them they would face additional charges if they didn't obey the conditions for their release.

Among the rules: They can't have contact with each other or anyone else connected to the case, and they can't have any guns.

"You are to have no weapons, no firearms, no rifles, no pistols, no AR-15s," Milloy said.

She rejected the prosecution's request that the men wear electronic monitors and be confined to their homes.

One of Miceli's two attorneys, Guy Womack, said he hopes his client has been wrongfully accused. "All the officers we've talked to are shocked he got caught up in something like this," Womack said. "He's an outstanding human being. His wife is a schoolteacher and they have three kids and are two months shy of a fourth."

After the hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim McAlister said he supported their release.

"We release most officers if they are not a threat (to the community) and these guys are not a threat," he said.

An indictment unsealed Monday alleges that during a conspiracy that lasted from October 2012 to December, the officers were paid to protect a vehicle they thought was carrying cocaine.

Their personnel files, including disciplinary history, were not available Monday.

Internal investigation

Canizales and Miceli have been relieved of duty but will remain on the city's payroll pending an outcome of an internal-affairs investigation, according to the HPD.

"We will never tolerate criminal misconduct from any of our employees," McClelland said.

Other recent cases of a local law enforcement officers being charged in a drug case include that of former Harris County sheriff's Deputy Richard Nutt Jr., who is scheduled to be sentenced next month after pleading guilty to charges of stealing loads from drug traffickers.

Earlier this month, Tomas Roque, a reserve Harris County deputy, was arrested and charged with aiding drug traffickers, and two other Houston police officers - German Ramos and Kendrick Ferguson - were charged late last year with stealing from drug traffickers.

I continue to be amazed at just how far backwards our Courts will bend over in order to accomodate police officers accused of illegal activity... I'm all for some leeway depending on the circumstances, but sheesh.

That's the question surrounding the case of Jeff and Jennifer Counceller, who rescued an injured fawn and nursed it back to health at their Connersville, Ind., home. The couple now faces the possibility of jail time and fines after state officials charged them with a misdemeanor for harboring the animal.

Jeff Counceller, a police officer in Connersville, and his wife were charged with unlawful possession of a deer, a misdemeanor that punished to its fullest extent could put the Councellers in jail for up to 60 days and cost them up to $2,000 in fines.

(ABC News) The couple rescued the deer more than two years ago after finding it on their neighbor's porch. The Councellers said the deer had sustained injuries, and they wanted to nurse it back to health.

"I could feel all of the open wounds all along her back side and she wouldn't stand up," Jennifer Counceller told ABC News.

They brought the deer home and named her Little Orphan Dani.

The Councellers said an Indiana Conservation Officer stopped by their home and discovered the deer this past summer. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources wanted to euthanize Dani, saying she might be dangerous and a threat to people.

"I was devastated. I spent a year and several months nursing her into adulthood, getting to the point where she was able to go out on her own," Counceller said.

On the day Dani was to be put down, the Councellers said she inexplicably escaped from their backyard. Even though Dani disappeared back into the wild, the Councellers' legal problems didn't go with the fawn.

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources said it couldn't comment on pending litigation but that it did discourage people from taking in injured wildlife. This case could go to court next month, and if charges aren't dropped, it will be left for a jury to decide whether the Councellers broke the law.

"No matter what the law is, we did what was right for the animal," Counceller said.

Meanwhile, the story has caused uproar on the Internet. A Facebook support page has more than 6,400 "Likes" in support of the couple. An online petition to drop the charges already has more than 3,800 signatures.

Rick on Change.org wrote, "An act of humanity should not be rewarded with a sentence."

Michelle on Facebook wrote, "They are being punished for having compassion and showing kindness."

Right. That's a situation where drones do make sense and it's how drones have been used for a while now.

But I just don't think that authorizing drones to fly over the continental United States and coming up with regulations for such flights is a bad thing or, as 333386 fears, part of Obama's secret plan to resurrect Stalin and make sweet sweet love to him.

It doesn't have much to do with imposing a massive surveillance society either; frankly if one is really concerned about that there are a lot more intrusive methods currently employed.

Although, I guess once drones become more affordable to own and operate those "Speed Enforced by Aircraft" signs on long stretches of deserted highways might actually give me pause. Not that I expect them to care much better than silly speed cameras.

So would you say that drones are unsuitable for, and consequently not intended for, surveillance beyond the function of a speed-monitoring plane?

So would you say that drones are unsuitable for, and consequently not intended for, surveillance beyond the function of a speed-monitoring plane?

No. I say that drones are unsuitable for the sort of wide-scale, real-time surveillance that the article posted suggests is right around the corner if drones are deployed in our skies. Drones have many benefits - the ability to be quickly deployed and roam over a particular area for a long time, the ability to be configured with custom sensor payloads, etc. They are beneficial tools. And while their deployment raises questions that we need to consider carefully before we allow their usage, I am more worried about government surveillance on the Internet than I am about government surveillance using drones.

No. I say that drones are unsuitable for the sort of wide-scale, real-time surveillance that the article posted suggests is right around the corner if drones are deployed in our skies. Drones have many benefits - the ability to be quickly deployed and roam over a particular area for a long time, the ability to be configured with custom sensor payloads, etc. They are beneficial tools. And while their deployment raises questions that we need to consider carefully before we allow their usage, I am more worried about government surveillance on the Internet than I am about government surveillance using drones.

You agree that drones are generally intended for targeted surveillance, that the capacity to perform such surveillance far exceeds the function of a speed-monitoring device, and that each new day effectively increases the capacity for a drone to perform surveillance.

You agree that drones are generally intended for targeted surveillance, that the capacity to perform such surveillance far exceeds the function of a speed-monitoring device, and that each new day effectively increases the capacity for a drone to perform surveillance.

. A store calling itself Fearless Distributing opened early last year on an out-of-the-way street in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood, offering designer clothes, athletic shoes, jewelry and drug paraphernalia.

Those working behind the counter, however, weren't interested in selling anything.

They were undercover agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives running a storefront sting aimed at busting criminal operations in the city by purchasing drugs and guns from felons.

But the effort to date has not snared any major dealers or taken down a gang. Instead, it resulted in a string of mistakes and failures, including an ATF military-style machine gun landing on the streets of Milwaukee and the agency having $35,000 in merchandise stolen from its store, a Journal Sentinel investigation has found.

When the 10-month operation was shut down after the burglary, agents and Milwaukee police officers who participated in the sting cleared out the store but left behind a sensitive document that listed names, vehicles and phone numbers of undercover agents.

And the agency remains locked in a battle with the building's owner, who says he is owed about $15,000 because of utility bills, holes in the walls, broken doors and damage from an overflowing toilet.

The sting resulted in charges being filed against about 30 people, most for low-level drug sales and gun possession counts. But agents had the wrong person in at least three cases. In one, they charged a man who was in prison - as a result of an earlier ATF case - at the time agents said he was selling drugs to them.

Would you be inclined to say that the saturation measure will involve the technological potentialities of the device, rather than a consideration for privacy?

I suspect that at some point privacy considerations will come into play. Of course, the American people have repeatedly shown that they care little about their privacy, willingly providing massive amounts of personal information to Facebook, Google and Apple and allowing the Federal Government to collect just about every bit of information in the name of security. So who knows, maybe I'm wrong.